Walt Whitman Rostow

Walt Whitman Rostow (7 October 1916-13 February 2003) was US National Security Advisor from 1 April 1966 to 20 January 1969, succeeding McGeorge Bundy and preceding Henry Kissinger.

Biography
Walt Whitman Rostow was born in Manhattan, New York City to a Russian-Jewish immigrant family of active socialists who named him after the poet Walt Whitman. He was a brilliant student, graduating from high school at the age of 15. Rostow became an anti-communist after hearing his father discuss how the Bolsheviks, unlike the Tsarists, targeted the families of political dissidents in addition to the dissidents themselves. He graduated from Yale University in 1940 and became an economics professor at Columbia University, and he served in the OSS during World War II. He participated in selecting targets for US Air Force bombardment during the war in Europe, and his plan to target oil centers succeeded. During the 1950s, he served as an advisor and speechwriter for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, convincing him to incrase military aid to fight the spread of communism. In 1960, he published The Stages of Economic Growth, in which he put forth his own economic model, impressing President John F. Kennedy and leading to Rostow writing Kennedy's "New Frontier" speech and being chosen as McGeorge Bundy's Deputy National Security Advisor in 1961. From 1966 to 1969, he served as National Security Advisor under President Lyndon B. Johnson, and he helped to shape US foreign policy in Southeast Asia, strongly supporting capitalism, free enterprise, and the Vietnam War. He left office in 1969 and worked as a professor at the University of Texas at Austin for the next 30 years, and he died in 2003 at the age of 86.